Hacks

A day job takes a lot out of us. Returning home at around 7 pm and then going back to office, the next morning is a bit of a monotonous routine which almost everyone of us do not appreciate. Even our families wait for weekends to enjoy with us and also get the chores done.

When we reach home, we usually spend our time watching news or some form of entertainment on television. We spend time on our mobile phones, watching YouTube videos, scrolling facebook and instagram pages and so on. But is that enough? Are we taking care of the larger goals in life?

The four most important areas of that relate to us are:

Health. This gives us the energy and ensures longevity.

Personal. There are some aspirations that everyone has, but does not address due to lack of time.

Family. These are the people who are with us throughout our lifetime, good or bad, happy or sad.

Net Worth. This is the financial aspiration for bread and butter.

You need to address all of them in order to lead a happy and successful life. Ignoring any one of them has its negative effects on our lives, either short term or long term.

Therefore, as you return home from work, there is something useful and productive that you can do to address these important areas of life in about four or five hours that you have.

Keep the Big Picture in mind

Write down at least 2 things in each of these areas that you need to address and find the most important one. Plan your goals and take it One Bite at a Time. It may be going for a quick jog in the park or gym, finish 4 books in a month, teaching your kids or even playing with them or so on. But keep a larger goal in your mind.

Get rid of Unwanted activities

Once you are home, do not get involved in activities which eat up your time and do not contribute to any of these four areas. These activities are typically watching youtube videos, engaging in social media, talking to colleagues over the phone, watching television for more than an hour, etc. These activities are the activities that do not require your attention once you are at home with your family. You may also install controlling apps such as QualityTime or RescueTime to limit your smartphone usage. Uncontrolled smartphone usage is a curse to productivity and happiness.

Facetime with Family

Remember that the amount of facetime that you give to any of your relation, has a direct impact on the strength and depth of the relationship. Make sure when you talk to people, keep your phones away, look at them, smile and talk. Listen to your spouse’s or kids’ routine, what has happened to them at their school, college or jobs. You may sometimes plan your weekends on Thursdays or Fridays which gives everyone something to look forward to on the coming weekend. It may be a movie, a visit to a mall, a small pizza party at home or any such thing. Engage and enjoy with them.

Get Selfish

Spend about an hour dedicated to yourself. During this hour, read books, listen to songs or do any activity that pleases you, for which you do not have time but you would love to do! It may also be working towards an idea that you may have had but never got time to work towards it. Even a small step everyday will take you about 300 steps in a year. If you do not take small steps, time is going to pass anyway! It may even be building a skill that may be required for your professional growth at job by doing an online course or something else, but you never got time to look at it. Think and write down the top three things that you will do tomorrow. Spend this time in isolation to be most effective.

Set alarm

The last thing you do before dozing off to sleep is setting up an alarm for the morning. Seven to eight hours of sleep is healthy for an adult. It feels really nice to dim your lights at least 15-20 minutes before you sleep. It tranquilizes you and sets up the mood for a good sleep.

Performing the above activities after you return home makes you productive and gives you a feeling of success. Everyone has the same time when they return home, but some people make better use of it than others, only to be more happy and energetic. It is not necessary to do the same things every day again and again. But try this with a perspective in mind for a month to translate it into a habit!

If you have more such tips and hacks, please share in the comments below! I’d love to hear them.

If you like what you just read, please hit the Like & Share Button so that others may stumble upon this.

There’s a lot more that can be done with our time and habits to direct our attention to personal success without really disturbing much!

“Success is the ability to live your life the way you want to live it, doing what you most enjoy, surrounded by people who you admire and respect” – Brian Tracy

There’s a lot more that can be done with our time and habits to direct our attention to personal success without really disturbing much!

Here are 10 easy to do hacks for you,

1) Listen to audio books while driving

In metro and urban cities, we usually spend long hours in traffic driving from between our office and home. An average of 2 hours a day is spent in this activity. Thanks to new startups who have got the new tech books called audio books, it is easy to listen to books rather than using our eyeballs. Get audio books of the books you always wanted to read on your phone or USB drive. Play it in the car. You will be able to listen to at least 2 books a week.

2) Control Emails

Emails are the biggest threat to productivity. With the smartphones, it is the emails that control our attention rather than we, controlling our emails and attention. Make sure that you change the smartphone email settings to ‘manual sync’ and check only at fixed hours in a day, twice or may be thrice a day! This will significantly reduce the notifications and disturbances on our smartphone.

3) Create chunks of time

“Nothing can add more power to your life than concentrating all of your energies on a limited set of targets” – Nido Quebein

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter shared his productivity secret, “The way I found that works for me is I theme my days“. Creating chunks of time to do a task gathers your focus and concentration which results in better performance. So, for example, you can create a chunk from 11 am – 12 noon for working on document, every Friday evening for review of your team, 10 am – 1030 am for making calls, and so on.

4) The Magical Question

Whenever you have a lot to do during the day, ask yourself this question, if you are allowed to do only one thing today before you are called out of town, what would be it? Once you pick it, complete that thing and then ask the same question again. It works magic!

5) Inbox & Review

One of the best ways to manage clutter is decide a place to inbox all the incoming clutter but make sure you review the inbox at a decided time of week or a specific time of day! This helps you let you do what you were doing when any incoming request came that required your attention (which is not urgent).

6) 2 min rule

This rule comes from David Allen’s bestselling book, Getting Things Done. It states that if any work requires action, think if it can be done in 2 minutes. If it can be completed in 2 mins, do it now! It’s surprising how many things we put off that we could get done in two minutes or less. You will start completing small activities and not schedule them for future and hence create a much stress free space for yourself!

7) Single handling

Multi-tasking in only good for software. For humans, single handling increases productivity. It is one of the most powerful time management techniques researched and will increase your output by around 500%. Launch a task, work on it until it is complete!

8) Make use of air & train travel

There is a lot of requirement for us to travel short and long distances for work and business. Our time during this flight usually goes without any much productive use. When you are about to travel, think a day before of what you need to do during that time. Download a book, movie, magazine or any other stuff offline to make use of that time.

9) Facetime

Remember that the amount of facetime you give to any of your relation, has a direct relation to the strength and depth of the relationship. Make sure when you talk to them, keep your phones away, look at them, smile and talk.

10) Stay positive

Be sure to remain positive. Use your social media for this. Follow facebook pages which inspire you, blogs that make you feel empowered and twitter handles that give you motivation. It is a nice way to put social media to good use.

Most people are unable to overcome a negative situation. A negative situation may arise in your personal life such as not being able to get a job or in a relationship. It may also be in your professional life such as not able to get promotions, or up your product sales. These negative situations arise out of the negative emotions and are the single biggest enemy of our life.

Therefore, what do we about it? The answer is to eliminate the negative emotions inside us to stay happy. This is the most logical and simple answer for this question.

But where do these negative emotions come from? According to a research, almost all the negative emotions depend on blaming someone or something else for the negative situations that happen in your life. This is human-like quality and will happen to each one of us and even happens to successful people too. So then why do some people come out positive from a negative situation? The key is this – People tend to hold on to these negative emotions, even if they can’t do anything about it or change it. This drives them into the loop about thinking about the same problem again and again. But it is this behavior that separates successful people from the crowd.

Here are 5 simple-to-do success hacks for turning a negative situation into a positive one:

Take responsibility of all the actions

People who drive themselves out of a negative situation hold themselves responsible for all the situations they are involved into. You might say that you cannot be responsible for something that you have not participated in, for example, if your car was parked in the parking lot and someone bumped into your car. Yes, you are correct, you are not responsible for the action but you are still responsible for the way you respond to it. It is important to note that you can’t take responsibility of your life or situations and be negative at the same time. It is contradictory to the human mind.

Take a deep breath, stay calm!

It helps to slow down the rush of blood and helps to you to respond and not react. Resolve to stay calm when something negative happens and a deep breath drastically increases the chances of a positive reaction to the situation.

Good In, Good Out

It is your mental diet that determines your character, similar to the physical diet that determines your physical health. Therefore, it is important to consume good mentally, in order to deliver positive thoughts and actions. Read educational, inspirational and motivational stuff like books, blogs, videos, etc.

Possible Solutions?

When you face a negative situation, a fight, a conflict, a problem, etc, try to shift your mind to think about the possible solutions to resolve the matter. Collect facts about the situation, ask questions and write your problem and everything down (mostly for business problems). This is the second most successful technique to turn a negative situation on its head. As soon as you realize that you are in a negative emotion, think of possible ways to resolve it.

Next action

Successful people are highly action oriented. When they face a problem or a negative situation, they find possible solutions and think what can be done next, how to fix this situation. This is the most successful technique of handling a negative emotion. Think about how to accomplish the next action to fix the situation.

Handling negative situations and responding maturely to turn them into positive emotions largely determines your personal success and happiness in life.

“Nobody can make you feel negative about a situation other than you. You have complete control over the way you feel, the way you respond to a situation and the way you think during the day.” – Brian Tracy